Since rail nesting at Charlie's Pond now seems a possibility, here is some information on the Ohio status of black rails. The only solid nesting record comes from 30 May 1996, when Wm. Richter found a nest destroyed after a farmer moved a Mahoning Co field. This pair may have renested (Ohio Cardinal 29(3):106), as singing went on into July. Nesting was strongly suspected, but as far as I can tell never confirmed, when many birds were found in Ross Lake Swamp in Hamilton County 1890-1893. Specimens from among these birds number seven at the Cincinnati Museum (Kemsies & Randle p. 17), and there is another at U Cal Berkeley. The 5th edition of the AOU Checklist gives Hamilton Co as the location of Ohio nesting records, but I don't know the source of this information--anybody with better access to the Cincinnati natural history journals of the day please let me know if I've missed it. Neither Trautman nor Peterjohn knew of any solid evidence of Ohio breeding by black rails, though both were aware of the Cincinnati phenomenon. Trautman (Annotated List Bds of OH, 1968, p. 314) gives an Ohio late date of 10 June 1923 for this species. It was an adult, and no evidence of breeding was found at the site, near Buckeye Lake. This date is of course superseded by Richter's, and Rosche gives a date of 21 July 1965 for NE Ohio. If these birds nest at Charlie's Pond, Pickaway County will be Ohio's only county with nesting records of *all* of our rails. About four miles north of Charlie's Pond, Ohio's first nesting yellow rails were found on 10 June 1907 (Ohio Cardinal 31(1):58-60. That's the history. Let's hope those rails make some more. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]